If you are like other people, you probably depend on your job to provide for yourself and your loved ones. You may be living paycheck to paycheck with the hopes that your job is enough to meet everyone’s needs. This is a reason wrongful termination is a serious case. This can happen when you are fired from your job unfairly due to illegal reasons like discrimination, retaliation, or harassment. If you think you have been let go illegally, contact a Capclaw Attorneys as soon as possible. Your attorney will evaluate your situation to determine if you have a case. Keep reading to learn what you need to have a strong wrongful termination case and the common reasons wrongful termination occurs:
Retaliation
To determine if you have a wrongful termination case, consider your employer’s motivation for firing you. An act of retaliation is a common cause of this termination. Usually, this occurs when you blow the whistle on your employer, a superior, or colleague for a misconduct. This can be reporting either party for their violation of the law, discrimination, or sexual harassment. The law protects whistleblowers from retaliation. If you think you were let go because of your actions in this way, the termination can be wrongful.
Employee Defamation
A lot of workers are hired at will. Thus, employers can lawfully remove workers from work once they see fit. But they should offer a valid reason for the termination. Sometimes, employers will create rumors regarding a worker to have a reason to fire them. They may assert that the worker said or did things that never occurred. Such fake stories provide an employer with false pretense to terminate the worker’s position and make it hard for the worker to get a new job. Under the law, defamation is illegal. If such allegations are found to be false, they can be used as evidence in a wrongful termination lawsuit.
Public Policy Violation
There are some reasons employers cannot fire their workers based on laws and regulations. If an employer fires a worker, they should do so without violating public policy. This can manifest itself in many ways. For instance, an employer cannot fire an employee for being pregnant or caring for a sick family member.
Discrimination
An employee cannot be fired because of their age, disability, gender, religion, or sexuality. Federal and state laws protect workers from discrimination in the workplace. But proving that a worker’s termination arises out of discriminatory actions by the employer can be hard. The employer will not admit that the identity of the worker was part of or the reason they terminated them.
You Were About to be Qualified for Benefits
A lot of companies provide incentives and increase employee benefits in exchange for staying with the company for a particular period. For instance, you may be guaranteed retirement benefits like a pension if you remain in the company for a certain amount of time.
If your employer fired you while you were almost qualified for such benefits, you may have a strong wrongful termination case. This can be the case if your track record shows minimal or zero grounds for lawful termination. A skilled attorney can help establish that you were fired to save the company money.
Contract Violation
A lot of employees work under contract. Such contracts include certain rules about employment and termination duration. Breaching an employment contract is illegal. Doing so is grounds for wrongful termination.
For instance, your employment contract states that your employer can only fire you for some actions like gross misconduct. Your employer is prohibited from ending your employment if you haven’t committed such acts. Your employer will have to wait until the contract duration ends.